Rebel forces launched attacks in and around Phnom Penh, killing at least 18 persons and wounding 31 others, field reports said. The assaults included rocket attacks on a pagoda and the burning of refugee camps and villages, the reports said. Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, authorities reported removing roadblocks set up by the rebelling Buddhist Hòa Hảo sect 90 miles southwest of Saigon near the district town of Phong Phú. Police gave no details. The sect was acting against government orders dissolving its private army.
U.S. Secretary of the Army Howard H. Callaway said at a NATO conference today that American combat strength in Europe would be increased during 1975 and that this trend would continue over the next few years. “Only if we maintain am increase our strength will we serve the cause of détente,” Mr. Callaway said of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Speaking of the Warsaw Pact, he said: “I believe that if the others clearly realize that we are prepared to counter the threat of war, then we shall not have to live through the horror of war.” Mr. Callaway said that “today’s U.S. Army is a stronger force than ever existed before in peacetime.” The Army Secretary said that in 1972 United States combat troops made up 59 percent of the total United States troop strength in Europe. That percentage now stands at 62 and should climb to 71 in 1977, he said. The United States has about 200,000 Army troops in Europe, most of them in West Germany. Over the last few months, the Defense Department has begun to reduce support troops in Europe and to replace them with combat units.
A bipartisan group of 22 Senators has asked President Ford to help involve policymaking officials in the negotiations of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference to resume in Geneva in March.
A Turkish soldier wounded Saturday in heavy machine-gun and mortar exchanges with Greek Cypriot national guardsmen has died, a spokesman for the U.N. peace-keeping force said in Nicosia. Calling the clashes a “major violation” of the six-month-old cease-fire, the spokesman said they occurred at a racetrack in the western outskirts of Nicosia and at a traffic circle near the international airport. Heavy rains made it impossible to determine which side initiated the fighting, he said.
The U.S. Army has removed a black Protestant chaplain from his church and transferred him to another congregation for selling cars to GIs, an Army spokesman in Wuerzburg, Germany, said. The spokesman said Major Herbert Turner is still in the Army and still a chaplain. He denied reports that Turner had been fired because he did off-duty work for German children fathered by black GI’s.
The militant Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army warned the Republic of Ireland’s government in Dublin that it faces grave consequences if it refuses to change its policy toward 15 guerrillas on a hunger strike in jail. The warning followed a statement by Justice Minister Patrick Cooney that “there can be no concessions” to the prisoners, who are demanding special status as political prisoners.
Attorneys for an American woman imprisoned more than two weeks ago on the ground that she was involved with an abortion clinic in Florence have issued a statement expressing “amazement” that authorities have not released her pending trial, as they have other such defendants.
Georgi P. Vins, leader of a Baptist movement in Moscow, has been sentenced to five years in prison to be followed by five years in exile for unauthorized religious activities, Andrei D. Sakharov, the dissident physicist, reported today.
The Israeli Cabinet voted today to set up a ministerial committee to decide on military operations. This authority had rested officially with the full Cabinet but in practice the cabinet was sometimes bypassed. A commission that conducted an inquiry into the reasons for Israel’s unpreparedness for the Arab assault in October, 1973, reported that full and up‐todate security information could not be provided to the entire Cabinet because of “a serious problem of leakage.” Accordingly the report said, a “focus of consultations” took place in special groups selected by the Premier — Golda Meir at the time of the war — without government authorization.
Egypt has adopted a five‐year plan to re‐equip her armed forces with French and British weapons, according to an article in Newsweek magazine quoting high‐level Egyptian sources. As reported by Newsweek, in the issue on sale today, the Egyptians first sought to switch from Soviet to American arms but were rebuffed by Secretary of State Kissinger, who reportedly said that while he personally favored such a plan, it would never win Congressional approval. The magazine said that the recent Egyptian purchase of French military equipment was the first step in the five‐year plan. The decision to seek an alternate source of weapons was said to have been made in the spring of 1973 when dissatisfaction with Soviet supply policies set in. News reports published before and uring that period said that many Egyptian officers were worried about spareparts shortages and that Egypt was beginning to seek alternative sources of military supplies and advisers in Western Europe. President Sadat was reported to be irritated by the Russians’ refusal to supply Egypt with offensive weapons in the form of fighter‐bombers and missiles with sufficient range to strike at Israel.
Kuwait’s oil minister, Abdul Rahman Atiki, said the continuing decline of the U.S. dollar may soon force the oil-producing nations to break their recently imposed freeze on oil prices and raise them again. He also suggested an emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to discuss the dollar’s fall and its effect on their oil earnings.
In another step in an expanding Iranian military presence in the Persian Gulf area, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran has “guaranteed” Oman against intruding foreign aircraft, the commander of Oman’s armed forces said, by committing his air force to combat the intruders if Oman so requests. The Iranian commitment is evidently directed mainly against the radical government of Southern Yemen. The Omani commander, Major General T. M. Creasey, discussed the Iranian guarantee at a farewell news conference held at the Omani military headquarters in this suburb of the Omani capital, Muscat. After a tour of duty commanding forces here on behalf of Sultan Qabus bin Said, he is to resume duties as a general in the British Army tomorrow. Another British general is to replace him. General Creasey also said that an Iranian ground‐to‐air defense system — which he did not identify — was already in service in Oman and was supplemented by the Iranian Air Force’s “air‐to‐air capability which can be in the country as soon as it is wanted.” Iranian Air Force F‐5 fighters could be in Oman in a matter of hours, after a request, he said.
Mohammed Afzal waved his arm toward the huge eagle newly emblazoned over the southern mouth of the Salang Highway Tunnel, which burrows between the snowy crags of the Hindu Kush. “The eagle flies up and up, and now Afghanistan will rise higher too!” said Mr. Afzal, a meteorologist at the Government outpost here, more than 11,000 feet above sea level. The soaring eagle is the emblem of Afghanistan’s new regime, led by a military strongman, President Mohammed Daud, and based on the support of the Soviet‐trained armed forces. It supplanted King Mohammad Zahir Shah after a coup 16 months ago, and since then offers of large amounts of Iranian aid — perhaps as much as $2‐billion — have helped raise the spirits and the expectations of Afghans and their leaders. “With full faith in a bright future, it is our hope that Afghanistan, under the banner of republicanism, will witness positive economic and social changes in the near future,” President Daud, a former general and Premier who built the armed forces over the years, said in a recent speech.
At least eight persons were killed and 100 injured when New Delhi police fired on a crowd of Muslims protesting the arrest of their religious leader, Indian officials said. The crowd set fire to a police station, stores and vehicles around the capital’s most important mosque, the Jama Masjid. The riots were sparked by the arrest of the imam, or high priest, of the mosque, the largest Muslim shrine in India, on charges of breaking up a meeting of a rival Muslim faction, the Waqf.
The loyalty of the South Korean Army to President Park Chung Hee has begun to show cracks that could jeopardize his hold on power.
A Philippine Air Lines turboprop airliner burst into flames on takeoff from Manila Airport, crashed in a field three miles away and exploded, killing all but one of the 32 persons aboard, an airline spokesman said. The survivor was identified as Roger Douglas Collins, 51, an American, who was found crawling from the burning wreckage, his clothes aflame. One victim was identified as the Rev. J. Hudson Mitchell, 57, New Rochelle, New York, a Jesuit priest and professor at Xavier University on Mindanao. The crash was listed as the second worst in Philippine history.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos said government troops were suffering severe casualties in fighting against Muslim secessionists in the southern Philippines. But he repeated his rejection of rebel demands for a separate state with a separate army.
Ethiopian troops massacred 103 civilians in the village of Woki Duba, after driving Eritrean rebels from the town. Official sources said that Ethiopia’s military government had ordered bombers, armored units and elite troops into operations against secessionist guerrillas in Eritrea Province. Nearly 200 people were repported wounded in what was described as the heaviest fighting since the rebel movement began in 1962.
Democrats in Congress might propose a tax cut as large as $22 billion — $6 billion more than proposed by President Ford, Al Ullman, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a television interview. Mr. Ullman, Democrat of Oregon, also said that the President’s goal of reducing foreign oil imports by a million barrels a day was “unrealistic.”
President Ford arranged for a breakfast meeting with congressional leaders from both parties tomorrow morning to discuss the budget he is sending to Capitol Hill at noon. Aides arranged also for formal ceremonies to sign the budget some time in the morning. Mr. Ford will sign his economic report at noon. In midafternoon, the President departs for Atlanta for a series of appearances in search of support for his economic and energy proposals. He plans three speeches, a working dinner with Southern governors and a press conference before returning to Washington Tuesday afternoon.
Albert Rees, director of President Ford’s Council of Wage and Price Stability, said he would step down from that post in August. Rees, 53, a Princeton economics professor, will become provost of Princeton. I’ve been somewhat of a maverick within this (the Ford) Administration and that has put a strain on all of us,” Rees said.
A bipartisan group of 14 House and Senate members called on President Ford to delay further increases in oil import tariffs. In a letter, the 14 members of the Joint Economic Committee asked Mr. Ford to set up an energy policy task force with representatives of both the executive and legislative branches to develop a mutually agreeable energy policy upon which prompt congressional action might be taken.” The letter, released by chairman Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota), expressed “grave concern” that a battle between the White House and Congress “will prevent the prompt and cooperative action on a tax reduction and energy program that is vital to achieving renewed growth.”
Consumers who expect retail sugar prices to follow the recent 50 percent drop in market quotations for raw sugar in bulk will probably be keenly disappointed. Not only will consumer prices for months to come reflect the record sugar costs paid by refiners last autumn, but consumers also will have to contend with worldwide shortages for a long time after the costly sugar moves through the commercial pipeline.
More than 745,000 legal abortions were performed in the United States in 1973 — an increase of 27 percent over the total for 1972, according to the first nationwide study of the impact of the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion two years ago. In 1974, it has been estimated, the total number of abortions rose to 900,000, or about 53 percent above 1972.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company said it monitored millions of long-distance calls between 1965 and 1970 as part of an effort to stop cheating on toll charges. The voice recordings were first reported by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A spokesman for AT&T said that “I don’t think we did anything illegal” and that he could not confirm the newspaper’s figure of 1.5 million calls recorded and sent to New York for analysis. He said that about 500 fraudulent calls were discovered over the five-year period.
Cartha ‘Deke’ Deloach, the former No. 3 man in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified under oath in 1973 that the bureau investigated Spiro Agnew shortly before the 1968 election at the request of President Johnson. In heretofore unpublished testimony, Mr. Deloach, who had been assistant to the FBI’s director, asserted that President Johnson asked the bureau to investigate Mr. Agnew on a matter of “the gravest national security” and that an investigation was conducted. The White House, he said, believed the Republicans were trying to slow down the South Vietnamese from going to the Paris peace talks.
An agreement was reached today to end peacefully the 33-day occupation of an unused Roman Catholic abbey in Wisconsin by armed Menominee Indians and to deed the property to the Menominee tribe.
The Civil Service Commission has prohibited its members and employees from recommending applicants for jobs in the federal government. The action, effective last Friday, was taken after disclosure that on 35 occasions in the last six years the three commission members had recommended job applicants to officials in federal agencies. The commission maintained that its job referrals were “not in themselves violations of any law, rule or regulation.
A federal contract officer who helped write a $10 million computer contract for the Federal Power Commission once worked for the company that won the contract. An FPC spokesman has confirmed that the officer, George Brent Vivian, previously had been employed by the winning bidder but denied he had had any involvement with the contract awarded last June. The contract was awarded to Planning Research Corp. a Los Angeles-based firm that employed Vivian from 1965 to 1971.
Fifteen Air Force personnel suffered minor injuries when a strong earthquake struck near the isolated Shemya Air Force Base in Alaska. The injuries were reported after an Air Force team had flown to the installation from Anchorage to assess damage from the quake, which registered 7.5 on the Richter scale. A spokesman for the Alaska Air Command at Elmendorf Air Force Base said no one was hospitalized and described the injuries as cuts and bruises. One thousand men live on Shemya, a volcanic atoll in the Aleutian chain of islands.
As a rush-hour crowd looked on, a man shoved a young woman to her death beneath an onrushing subway train in Brooklyn, police reported. Mrs. Michelle Reives, 25, mother of three, was pushed so hard, police said, “she literally flew off the platform. She struck the front of the first car, then fell beneath the wheels. Five cars passed over her. Her head was severed. Officers arrested John Heiberg, 42, a mail carrier, at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn St. station as he was calmly walking to an exit. Heiberg denied having pushed Mrs. Reives. At one point he yelled to policemen and bystanders, I’m going bowling tomorrow.” He was remanded to Kings County Hospital yesterday for psychiatric examination at the request of his lawyer.
A predawn shooting between two uniformed policemen and two off-duty housing authority patrolmen in New York City left two of the men dead — a uniformed officer of the police department and a housing authority policeman in civilian clothes. A second housing authority policeman was wounded and a cab driver was cut by flying glass. The cause of the incident was not clear but a police spokesman, asked if the off-duty housing policemen had been drinking, replied: “We have information there was socializing.” Later information indicated that “there had been a dispute between the two housing policemen.
The head of the National Indian Youth Council says the Navajos are in danger of losing their land, culture and religion to provide power to cool homes, toast bread and heat swimming pools in Los Angeles. The statement from Gerald Wilkinson was made in answer to a proposal by Western Gasification Co. to construct four coal gasification plants on the Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners area. Wilkinson will be one of several persons to appear at hearings on an environmental impact statement on the proposed plants.
Nearly all existing jet aircraft engines should be fitted with sound-absorbing materials to lessen noise, the Environmental Protection Agency recommended. The proposal must be approved by the Federal Aviation Agency and would not affect the DC10, L-1011 or 747 wide-bodied aircraft because their engines are quieter than those of older jets. The EPA estimated the move would cost US. airlines about $880 million over a four-year period and businessmen who own the nation’s 560 private jet aircraft about $300 million. EPA director Russell Train said the airlines could recover the cost by increasing fares by less than $2 per ticket for the next six to nine years. The EPA said 16 million Americans are subject to a variety of aircraft noise which affects homes, schools and hospitals. The FAA proposed similar regulations last March but has not issued final regulations, an EPA spokesman said.
The United States is out of the Davis Cup, beaten by Mexico’s one-man band, Raul Ramirez. The 21-yearold from Ensenada, now a national hero, won from Roscoe Tanner today, 7-5, 7-9, 6-4, 6-2, to go along with his first-day victory over Stan Smith and his doubles triumph yesterday with Vicente Zarazua. Ramirez and Zarazua upset Bob Lutz and Dick Stockton in a tremendous five-setter.
Both the caliber of tennis and the intensity of competition proved worthy of the circumstances today as Jimmy Connors defeated Rod Laver, 6-4, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 for a $100,000 prize in Las Vegas.
The U.S. women’s Figure Skating championship is won by 18-year-old Dorothy Hamill.
The U.S. men’s Figure Skating championship is won by Gordon McKellen Jr.
Born:
Donald Driver, NFL wide receiver (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 45-Packers, 2010; Pro Bowl, 2002, 2006, 2007; Green Bay Packers), in Houston Texas.
Macey Brooks, NFL wide receiver (Chicago Bears), in Hampton, Virginia.
Larry Shannon, NFL wide receiver (Miami Dolphins), in Gainesville, Florida.
Todd Bertuzzi, Canadian National Team and NHL right wing (Olympics, 2006; NHL All-Star, 2003, 2004; New York Islanders, Vancouver Canucks, Florida Panthers, Detroit Red Wings, Anaheim Ducks, Calgary Flames; noted for his 2004 attack on Steve Moore during a 2004 game), in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Chris Garner, NBA point guard (Toronto Raptors, Golden State Warriors), in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dana Wynne, WNBA forward (Sacramento Monarchs), in Orange, New Jersey.
[Ed: This is, of course, the last Tết for Saigon. Next year it will be Hồ Chí Minh City, and under new masters.]
History Diaries 